scholarly journals Declaration as Disavowal: The Politics of Race and Empire in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Stone Mackinnon

This article argues that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), by claiming certain inheritances from eighteenth-century American and French rights declarations, simultaneously disavowed others, reshaping the genre of the rights declaration in ways amenable to forms of imperial and racial domination. I begin by considering the rights declaration as genre, arguing that later participants can both inherit and disavow aspects of what came before. Then, drawing on original archival research, I consider the drafting of the UDHR, using as an entry point the reception of the NAACP’s Appeal to the World petition, edited by W.E.B. DuBois. I reconstruct conversations within the drafting committee about the right to petition, self-determination, and the right to rebellion, and the separation of the Declaration from the rights covenants, to illustrate the allegiances between US racial politics and French imperial politics, and their legacies for our contemporary conceptions of human rights.

2018 ◽  
Vol 99 (5) ◽  
pp. 76-77
Author(s):  
Julie Underwood

The right to an education is guaranteed by international law in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Similarly, UNESCO’s Constitution sets out the right to an education as necessary to “prepare the children of the world for the responsibilities of freedom.” No such right is mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, though. Perhaps Congress or the Supreme Court would be sympathetic, however, to an argument for educational rights based on the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of the rights of citizenship.


1973 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-66

A Declaration Adopted by the Uppsala Collogium, Sweden, June 21, 1972. In June 1972, in Uppsala, Sweden, legal and human rights experts from 25 countries joined in a colloquium to examine the meaning and implications of Article 13 (2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” Brought together under the auspices of the Law Faculty of Uppsala University, the Renέ Cassin International Institute for Human Rights, in France, and the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, in New York, the participants reviewed current policies and practices around the world related to the right to leave and to return. Taking as their springboard a group of draft principles approved in 1963 by the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, they adopted a Declaration on the subject.


Al-Duhaa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (02) ◽  
pp. 95-112
Author(s):  
Dr. Burhan Uddin ◽  
Arsala Khan ◽  
Abdur Rahim Khan

The history of slavery is very old. In which three types are very famous. Sell a freelance person, making slavery to a person resulting in a loss, and the prisoners arrested in the war were enslaved. Islam eliminated the first two types and the third case as an option left. On December 10th, 1948 UN passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which includes the right to human rights with other rights. Any type of slavery was prohibited. In the light of this universal charter, objections to Islam's concept of slavery began to be raised. What is the validity of the objections in the light of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948  raised against the Islamic concept of slavery? the methodology adopted for this research is to examine the contents of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from an Islamic point of view. In the same way, a true Islamic, rational and logical examination of the concept of slavery of Islam has been presented. There is also a wise law about slaves in the universal system that Islam has given to the world. Slavery in the name is left, otherwise, all their rights are in no way less than free human beings.   In case of any kind of abuse, they could have approached the Islamic court and got justice.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (40) ◽  
pp. 37-47
Author(s):  
Teshale Shambel

AbstractThe right to self-determination is one of the human rights enshrined under the Ethiopian constitution. It is also one of the rights mentioned under ICCPR and ICESCR as well as the constitutions of different countries. Being unique to many other human rights instruments and constitutions in the world, the Ethiopian constitution includes the unconditional right to secession as a part of self-determination for every one of the ethnic groups (nations, nationalities, and people) in the country. As argued among many scholars, the inclusion of unconditional secession as a part of self-determination right in the Ethiopian constitution was based on the wrong narrative that nations, nationalities and people in the country were oppressed. Thus, it is a point of political debate between elites and became the major cause of widening the divergence among views of different political parties in the country. Of course, within the constitution, there are hurdles that can potentially deny exercising of this right. Therefore, this study qualitatively analyses the impracticability of secession and unacceptability of narratives to its inclusion in the constitution of the federal democratic republic of Ethiopia.


2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-21
Author(s):  
Jef Van Langendonck

This article initially dwells on the concept of social security's historical development. It starts with the characteristics and the spirit behind the inclusion of such right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It then discusses the now ancient paradigm set by the I.L.O and the neo-liberal approach by the World Bank, pointing both theories merits as well as unmasking their flaws. It concludes by offering a new concept of international social security via the collaboration between nations, grounded mainly on the solidarity principle.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulo André Stein Messetti ◽  
Dalmo De Abreu Dallari

Introduction: Human dignity, as coined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR / 1948), is an expression social solidarity, which should cement the relations between people. Human dignity is the foundation of all rights, such as freedom, equality, justice and peace in the world, and in Brazil, human dignity was deemed a fundamental pillar of the country’s post-1988 constitutional order. Objective: This article seeks to a deeper investigation about the social nature of human dignity and its definition over time.     Methods: This is an exploratory research meant to unpack the concepts of "human dignity", "bioethics", "human rights" and "constitution". After describing the conceptual evolution of human dignity and the facts relevant to its conceptual formation in world history - as a normative standard and a legal rule -, we address the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR/1948), the Declaration of Helsinki (DH/1964), the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (UDBHR/2005), and the definition adopted in the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil (CFRB/1988). The study was carried out without temporal limitation, and included a review of referenced books, legal doctrines, as well as articles and books in the SciELO database. Results and discussion: The findings ratify that human dignity is the foundation of all rights, including those of freedom, equality, justice and peace in the world, and must also guide the rights and duties of social regulation. Human dignity has changed from a criterion of power attributed to the social position of individuals to a value of the right to freedom, which now goes beyond the right of freedom and is the basis of modern constitutional democracy, which makes possible the realization of solidarity, as well as the duty and purpose of the state and the community. The will of the subject, of society, of the science and of the state, as well as the rules of domination and regulation, must have a limit on human dignity, and human dignity is not just fundamental right, in the sense of the Constitution, and must prevail over the exclusive will of science, the State and society. Therefore, in the making of power decisions and in realization of possible innovations of science involving human beings, human dignity demands the explicit consideration of respect and promotion of it. Conclusion: Human dignity is enshrined in Brazilian constitutional law, as well as in bioethics and in human rights, and it constitutes all the fundamental rights of the human person. It is not merely a rule of autonomy and liberty, and it is an obligatory and non-derogable precept in the making of power decisions, a true main foundation of constitutional democracies.  


2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 180-188
Author(s):  
Bianca Nicla Romano

Art. 24 of the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights recognises and protects the right of the individual to rest and leisure. This right has to be fully exercised without negative consequences on the right to work and the remuneration. Tourism can be considered one of the best ways of rest and leisure because it allows to enrich the personality of the individual. Even after the reform of the Title V this area is no longer covered by the Italian Constitution, the Italian legal system protects and guarantees it as a real right, so as to get to recognize its existence and the consequent compensation of the so-called “ruined holiday damage”. This kind of damage has not a patrimonial nature, but a moral one, and the Tourist-Traveler can claim for it when he has not been able to fully enjoy his holiday - the essential fulcrum of tourism - intended as an opportunity for leisure and/or rest, essential rights of the individual.


ICL Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-105
Author(s):  
Markku Suksi

Abstract New Caledonia is a colonial territory of France. Since the adoption of the Nouméa Accord in 1998, a period of transition towards the exercise of self-determination has been going on. New Caledonia is currently a strong autonomy, well entrenched in the legal order of France from 1999 on. The legislative powers have been distributed between the Congress of New Caledonia and the Parliament of France on the basis of a double enumeration of legislative powers, an arrangement that has given New Caledonia control over many material fields of self-determination. At the same time as this autonomy has been well embedded in the constitutional fabric of France. The Nouméa Accord was constitutionalized in the provisions of the Constitution of France and also in an Institutional Act. This normative framework created a multi-layered electorate that has presented several challenges to the autonomy arrangement and the procedure of self-determination, but the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee have resolved the issues regarding the right to vote in manners that take into account the local circumstances and the fact that the aim of the legislation is to facilitate the self-determination of the colonized people, the indigenous Kanak people. The self-determination process consists potentially of a series of referendums, the first of which was held in 2018 and the second one in 2020. In both referendums, those entitled to vote returned a No-vote to the question of ‘Do you want New Caledonia to attain full sovereignty and become independent?’ A third referendum is to be expected before October 2022, and if that one also results in a no to independence, a further process of negotiations starts, with the potential of a fourth referendum that will decide the mode of self-determination New Caledonia will opt for, independence or autonomy.


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